Enables us to handle business critical data with HA.
Storage Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Enables us to handle business critical data with HA
Pros and Cons
- "NAS stability"
- "Good for NAS and unified solutions."
- "Needs more SAN support."
How has it helped my organization?
What is most valuable?
- NAS stability
- Simple customer support
What needs improvement?
Needs more SAN support.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
Buyer's Guide
NetApp FAS Series
April 2024
Learn what your peers think about NetApp FAS Series. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2024.
771,063 professionals have used our research since 2012.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
No stability issues yet.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
No scalability issues yet.
How are customer service and support?
Eight out of 10.
How was the initial setup?
Works on administration, not implementation.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Not overrated, though there are products available in market with comparatively lower costs.
What other advice do I have?
Good for NAS and unified solutions.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Database Manager at Wilson Trailer
Since updating to Dynamix AX 2012, not a week has gone by that we haven’t fired up a clone to test a user, code, etc.
Valuable Features
- Clone – we updated to Dynamix AX 2012, and not a week has gone by that we haven’t fired up a clone to test a user, code, etc.
- Disaster Recovery suite of functions
- Quick backups that don’t impact system
- Refreshes test environments quickly
Improvements to My Organization
- Reliability – hardware performs well, we’ve never had problems
- Great support from Sirius
- We’re able to recover a file if we need to
Room for Improvement
We use mirroring a lot, and if it had snap manager for SQL included, we could do that from one location.
Stability Issues
Rock solid. I’ve been at Wilson for three years and have also used it before at another company. We have a disk go out every once in a while, but no issue with FAS.
Scalability Issues
In the last growth, we went from a 3250 to an 8020. We’ve set it up to grow out easily by just adding trays.
Customer Service and Technical Support
Lately, a little slow to respond, but once you get someone, they’re very knowledgeable, although I haven’t had to use it a lot.
Initial Setup
I was familiar with 3250’s from another company, so I knew how to use the software, but Sirius helped us. So in that regard, it was straightforward.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Buyer's Guide
NetApp FAS Series
April 2024
Learn what your peers think about NetApp FAS Series. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2024.
771,063 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Enterprise Data Storage Engineer III at University of Kentucky
Snapshots lets us revert accidental deletes quickly and easily, and although we had an outage when batteries were bad, it was a known defect and our fault for knowing this was an issue.
Valuable Features
Snapshot, because so much of it is on our end-user storage, our users often delete things they’re not supposed to. Having snapshots to revert these deletes quickly and easily is very valuable.
Improvements to My Organization
Our greatest advantage with it is ease of use, flexibility, and reliability.
Room for Improvement
Knowing what’s coming down the pipe, NetApp is headed in the right direction. In their five year roadmap, it provides what I need it to do.
Stability Issues
It's extraordinarily stable. We had one outage one-and-a-half years ago when batteries were bad, but that was a known defect on that particular model. However, that was our fault for knowing this was an issue. We've had two outages in 10 years due to something other than operator’s error.
Scalability Issues
Incredibly scalable. Not even touching what it could do. Between scale up and scale out, we’re not even close to reaching its highest potential. We have a four node NAS with the potential for 24 nodes.
Customer Service and Technical Support
It's fantastic.
Initial Setup
Once you’ve done one, it seems very intuitive. However, the first time seems very complicated.
Other Advice
Of all storage technologies I work on, it’s the easiest to learn and one of the most powerful. But you need to spend your time taking classes before digging in too deep. Get educated.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Storage Administrator at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
Its data compression saves a lot of capacity we'd otherwise have to have. It could improve by better integrating with other technologies like VMware, as there are some version conflicts.
What is most valuable?
- Clustered data ONTAP
- Data compression
- High Availability
- Snapshot technology
How has it helped my organization?
It helps us reduce costs because its data compression saves a lot of capacity we'd otherwise have to have.
What needs improvement?
It could improve by better integrating with other technologies like VMware, as there are some version conflicts. When you are using the newest storage virtual console, you cannot use VM Wall, the VM-specific firewall.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using it for a year for SQL databases.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
We've had no issues with deployment.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's very stable and we've had no problems in the year we have used it.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It has scaled to our needs.
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer Service:
Customer service is good; we've had no problems with them.
Technical Support:Technical support is good; we've had no problems with them either.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We used HDS before NetApp and we switched because of the snapshot technology and high-availability function.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was pretty straightforward, the implementation of the system was easy, and we had great support from the NetApp team.
What about the implementation team?
We used a vendor team who had strong expertise, and we are happy with the implementation. It’s important to have NetApp technicians implement the solution because it is helpful to have some experts.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
No other options were evaluated.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Systems Engineer at a government with 501-1,000 employees
We were able to restore a lot of data in about an hour, although NetApp OnCommand, which has been a lot better recently, could still be made faster.
What is most valuable?
The integration with VMware is the most valuable feature for us because we run a lot of VMs and the backup is very good when you run your VM in NFS.
How has it helped my organization?
We had a case when they had to restore a lot of data. We went back one hour and got back everything. The restore itself only took about an hour.
What needs improvement?
Some of the tools could be improved like NetApp OnCommand. This has been a lot better recently, but they could make it faster.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've been using it since 2005.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's very stable and I’ve never experienced any problems in 10 years.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It scales to our needs.
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer Service:
8/10 - only because it is impossible to have a 10, as there is no one that good. We’ve had a good experience with their customer service.
Technical Support:The solutions that are present on NetApp’s website are enough usually, but when it is tough for me to resolve it on my own I go to our consultant.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We did a long time ago.
How was the initial setup?
Initial setup was pretty straightforward. We started on a small scale and built it up.
What about the implementation team?
We implemented it in-house, but we use a consulting company to help. Now, we run it on our own.
What was our ROI?
It fulfills the needs we have for storing data well. We had a lot of storage spread out over many devices from many vendors and now everything is consolidated. It saves a lot of time.
What other advice do I have?
Ask other people who use it as references are really valuable.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Storage Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
The snap products allow the end-user to make restorations and perform offsite replications.
Valuable Features
- Redundancy
- Snap technologies (snap mirror, snap shots)
Improvements to My Organization
The snap products allow the end-user to make restorations and perform offsite replications. Also, it gives us secure multi-tenancy.
Room for Improvement
Nothing that I can think of right now.
Use of Solution
We've used it for seven in years.
Stability Issues
It's pretty stable. We've only needed NetApp engineers to help with an issue once since we started using it.
Scalability Issues
Very scalable, haven’t reached its limits.
Customer Service and Technical Support
Generally goes well.
Initial Setup
Very straightforward from rack stack to configuration.
Other Advice
With FAS and other NetApp tools, they make for a very intuitive solution. It's simple to manage, very scalable, one-stop shop and many native things that make it very powerful.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
IT Architect at a aerospace/defense firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
We can give people large amounts of storage for projects, and then remove it, though improvements could be made to the translation between 7-mode and cDOT.
Valuable Features
We have clusters, and can do non-distruptive upgrades with cDOT and can spin up VMs as needed. We have the flexibility to give people NAS storage.
Improvements to My Organization
With NAS storage in general, we can give people large amounts of storage for projects, and then remove it. For example, for SLS, they can spin up large amounts of storage to hold the output of modeling data, and when that’s done, they can delete it and move on. In that case, they don’t need the throughput.
We have thousands and thousands of file shares and we’re able to offer up to one terabyte of storage, and this gives us high compression and dedupe.
Room for Improvement
For cDOT in general, improvements could be made to the little things, such as the translation between 7-mode and cDOT. If there’s some kind of backward compatibility or translation of certain functions from one to the other, that would be an improvement.
Stability Issues
It's very stable.
Scalability Issues
With cDOT, it's very good. It scales horizontally well, but not so well with 7-mode.
Customer Service and Technical Support
It’s top-notch support, very responsive and highly knowledgeable, very attentive to us as we have a monthly meeting with our TAM.
Initial Setup
It's straightforward in 7-mode, but using cDOT, it's terrible.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
There is a transition tool that will move the data from 7-mode to CDOT. However, SnapVault relationships cannot be retained when moving from 7-mode to CDOT. This means that multiple copies of the data must be retained until SLA expiration policies allow for it to be deleted (in my case, years). I was speaking specifically about the translation of commands used to admin the system. Commands you knew by heart in 7-mode no longer work in CDOT. There are many things to like about CDOT, which is why we are making the move, but there are many things that don't work as well as they did in 7-mode. For instance, there is no ability to disable NETBIOS over TCP in CDOT and active directory integration is much harder to setup and manage.
HPC & Cloud systems administrator at Brightskies
It's highly reliable, even under a heavy load, and it's easy to manage
Pros and Cons
- "NetApp FAS is highly stable and reliable, especially under a heavy load. That is what I like most about the NetApp."
- "I would like to see NetApp add incident support."
What is our primary use case?
We are using NetApp FAS for some encrypted projects and to provide home direction for our users.
What is most valuable?
NetApp FAS is highly stable and reliable, especially under a heavy load. That is what I like most about the NetApp.
What needs improvement?
I would like to see NetApp add incident support.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using NetApp SAS for three or four years.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
If we needed to scale beyond what we have now, we could do it. I would say NetApp's scalability is sufficient for our needs. We have hundreds of users accessing the file system on a daily basis.
How are customer service and support?
NetApp support is helpful, and their technicians are knowledgeable. They usually respond fast. I would rate NetApp support eight out of 10.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We previously used a Dell product. I think the two solutions are very similar. I also worked with Visionet, but that is apples and oranges. I wouldn't compare NetApp FAS with Visionet because these are very different site systems—parallel site systems.
What other advice do I have?
I rate NetApp FAS Series eight out of 10. I recommend NetApp FAS because it's reliable and easy to manage. NetApp support is helpful. I encourage anyone to choose NetApp.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Buyer's Guide
Download our free NetApp FAS Series Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros
sharing their opinions.
Updated: April 2024
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